Where Toughened Glass is Used

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Where Toughened Glass is Used

Toughened glass can have various uses, mainly for when all the

properties of normal glass are required, but also the stronger

properties that toughened glass has.

It is used in situations that glass would just not be strong enough

for, such as in frameless shower screens or office partitions inside

buildings, or on the exterior of buildings where large spans of glass

are required, such as office buildings where the exterior is mainly

glass. It is also used a great deal in all forms of transport for

windows and windscreens, as regular glass could not stand up to the

conditions that many vehicles face.

The main use of toughened glass being focussed focused on today is in

car windscreens. Toughened glass must be used for these, and in most

countries there are regulations in place regarding the thickness and

strength to ensure that safety is always at a high standard.

It is necessary to use toughened glass in this situation due to the

fact that regular glass could prove very dangerous to the occupants of

the car if it were to break. When normal glass breaks in a car

accident, it would break into large, jagged pieces with very sharp

edges, with many smaller pieces which could fly backwards into the car

at a high speed. This could cause very severe injuries to any

occupants of the car and can greatly increase the severity of any

accident.

Glass, as with other materials, will only break when it cannot

withstand the amount of stress that it is under. One cause of this

stress could be cracks in the glass, which will then propagate through

the glass, increasing the stress as they get deeper.

The normal stress pattern within glass is evenly distributed so that

no one point of the glass is under more stress than another. When a

crack appears in the glass, the stress in the area will concentrate

around the tip of the crack, causing it to propagate. These stresses

on the bonds between the glass molecules become so high that the bonds

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